


Heads in Boxes

by Sonora



Series: Heads in Boxes [1]
Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Angry Sex, Background Character Death, M/M, Spoilers, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-16 23:00:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1364935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonora/pseuds/Sonora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ressler goes to see Reddington after Tanida.  Shit happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heads in Boxes

“What’d you do with the head, Agent Ressler?”

It’s the first thing that Reddington said to him. The first thing, when he walked through that door, to this very nice hotel suite, the answer to his question to Keen when she’d show up with the coroner team to deal with that fucking... thin in his apartment, _how do I find him?_

Ressler felt like his skin was burning off, itchy and uncomfortable, overtaken by a hundred things he didn’t understand and didn’t want to look at.

Audrey was dead.

That was all that mattered.

That, and that fucking head.

The head that Reddington - the asshole in front of him, his greatest enemy, the man he chased across half the world for five years, now here, casually drinking a bourbon like nothing was wrong - sent him that night.

“Why’d you send it to me?”

“I thought you wanted it. Assurances your enemy was dead.”

“His fucking _head_ in a box!?”

Reddington just stared back, expression bored but eyes sharp, and Ressler wondered, not for the first time, what the man was looking at. What he saw. “Donald, let it never be said that I didn’t take care of a friend in need.”

“We aren’t friends.”

“No.”

“Why did you send it to me?” he demands, desperate, fingers digging into the arms of Reddington’s chair, and there’s no reaction, no reaction, on the criminal’s face and it’s more, far more, than Ressler can stand.

“Well, if you won’t listen to the answer...”

“That’s not a fucking answer! Since when do you do anything that doesn’t benefit you!?” Ressler demanded, pacing, eyes half-closed against the anger surging through his blood, trying to think. What had Reddington said? _If you step into the darkness..._ "Is... is this some kind of sick game? Trying to get me on your side? Trying to drag me down into you fucking world?"

Reddington just sighed, running a deliberate finger around the top of his glass. "Agent Ressler..."

"Don't think I don't see what you're doing to Liz!"

And that actually got a reaction. The glass set down. The chair pushed back. 

"What's between me and Agent Keen is none of your business, Agent Ressler, and I would suggest you table that line of inquiry before I decide that your childish behavior merits a spanking," he said, and slipped one of his cufflinks from a tailored sleeve, palming it. "I don't think you're quite up for that tonight."

"Why did you send me that head?" he asked, crossing his arms in front of his chest, wincing at the plea in the words. "Reddington..."

The cufflinks were laid aside on a small table, that Omega Reddington always wore following. "But you do need to be punished, don't you, Donny? That's what you're thinking right now. That you could have saved her."

His mouth felt dry, cottony. Oh, god. "Tanida shot her."

"But you took her from her apartment. You put her in harm's way. You're the reason..." 

And something in Ressler just snapped.

It happened as if in a dream - a nightmare, a hallucination. One second Reddington was standing in front of him smirking, and the next he had him down on the bed by his throat, ripping at those fucking Italian wool trousers until the seams tore and the things were in shreds on the silk duvet. 

Reddington laughed. Laughed and laughed and laughed. Kicked off the ruins of his pants. Pulled his feet up on the bed. Kept laughing - nothing like his normal mocking, terrible laugh either, but something that sounded as if it came from a place of genuine amusement.

It only made Ressler angrier.

"This what you want, you sick bastard?" he growled, tearing his own pants open, fingers trembling on his fly. His cock was hard, and he didn't want to think about that. The last time he'd... it had been Audrey, her hair falling around her shoulders, smile infectious, beautiful, laughing as she took him in, finger digging into his back as she gasped her pleasure into their bedroom. He swallowed - it had become their bedroom again, hadn't it? Audrey had come back to him, and he was going to keep her forever. "This perverted enough for you?"

"You're adorable, Donny," Reddington smiled back - and how was he doing that, lying there half-naked and half-hard on the bed, looking like he was king of the fucking world - "but like we used to say in the Navy, shit or get off the pot."

He wasn’t really sure how it happened, what he did, what Reddington did, but it seemed like only a eyeblink between that moment and the next, condom on his rock-hard cock - and he’d never done anything like that with a men before, never wanted to, and he had no idea what he was doing. But then he was inside the older man, and he dug his fingers into the sharp angles of his hips.

Nothing like Audrey.

Somehow, that made it okay.

It was rough. Brutal. Reddington’s legs hooking around his and Reddington’s hands on his back, and Ressler just dug a hand into Reddington’s distressingly short hair and pounded into him, exactly in the rhythm that Reddington was showing him, because he didn’t want to think about the fact that the criminal was _showing him_ how to fuck him.

Ressler shut his mind down.

Just let himself pound through it.

Reddington never stopped laughing.

+++++

An eternity later, Ressler lay on his back, staring up at nothing, mind swimming, cock spent, flaccid, against his thigh. He had just... what had he done? What had they done? What was...

"Feel free to stay as long as you want, Agent Ressler" - and it almost hurt, hearing that, instead of _Donny_. "The room's paid for, no need to check out in the morning. Order room service if you want, it's all on me. Dembe will take you anywhere you want to go in the morning."

Raising his head with significant effort, Ressler frowned at the sight that greeted him; Reddington, in a fresh suit, one that matched the destroyed one perfectly, slipping his cufflinks back in. The FBI agent opened his mouth, and shut it, not sure what was going to come out of it, not wanting to risk any of the hundred embarrassing things it might have been.

Reddington looked at him, though, and sat down on the edge of the bed, handing him a glass of bourbon, gesturing him up. Unsure of what he was supposed to do, he found himself sitting up, accepting the drink. The anger had ebbed; all there was was a hollow, and he had no idea hwat he should do with that. 

"I like you, Agent Ressler. Enthusiastic puppy, aren't we?"

The alcohol burned his throat, and the words came out hoarse. "This the part where you tell me we're not so different?"

That pulled one of those laughs - those mocking laughs, jesus fuck - and Reddington just stood. "No, Agent Ressler, this is not that part of our story. But good, glad you know your action movies references. Nice to know you're not the hollow suit you pretend to be on our little cases together."

Head spinning, Ressler blinked, and shook his head. That orgasm, that had been... there had never been anything like that, and...

"At least I don't take it up the ass," he said defiantly, words slurring a little, and he frowned at himself.

A hand was on his cheek, sliding back into his hair, tipping his face up for appraisal, thumbs wiping wetness across his cheekbones, and Ressler almost leaned into it. It was gentle; gentler than anything he had a right to, and he wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel about that.

It felt too good.

"Isn't that a shame, you darling boy?"

His smile was sharklike.

Ressler couldn't focus on anything else. The room was blurring to nothing, his vision pinched and breathing painful. "I'm not..."

"Shh, Donny, just go to sleep. Be a good boy for da..."

It occurred to him, right before he blacked out, that the drink had tasted a little off.

+++++

The room was bright, when he woke, gasping and thrashing at the sheets, the last thing hanging in his mind from the night before the sight of Reddington looming over him, two fingers pushed against the pulse point of his wrist.

 _The second time he's listened to your heartbeat,_ he thought to himself, and wanted to cry, all over again.

Audrey had been dead less than seventy-two hours, and he hadn't dreamed of her.

Where the hell was he, anyway?

Ressler laid there in bed - naked, he noticed, not a little disconcerted - trying to piece the rest of the night. He came over, talked to Reddington, fucked Redding, holy shit...

He fucked Reddington.

 _And it was good_ , his traitorous brain offered, dishing him up a plateful of memories; the way the criminal’s body felt under his, around his, flexing and moaning like he was enjoying it too, no quarter, so different from Audrey, so different, not at all soft and yielding. Hard. Violent.

_You needed that._

_Shut up._

He took a shower. Tried to think about how many goddamn STDs Reddington might have, instead of the victory of that surrender that wasn’t really a surrender at all. Pulled a robe on, still feeling Reddington’s hands on his clothes. Ordered room service.

The eggs were delicious, the coffee decadent.

He had no earthly idea what the fuck what had gotten into him the night before. 

Couldn’t get it out of his mind.

Dembe was there, waiting for him in the lobby of the hotel when he finally worked up the courage to leave the place. Reading a paper. Casual as could be. 

“I can call a cab,” he said.

“Mr. Reddington told me to drive you home,” the big African replied, with a slight tilt of his head. Under that jacket, Ressler could see, was a shoulder holster. “Let me drive you home.”

It wasn’t until later - much later, after he’d taken another shower, after he’d scrubbed himself until he was red, stared at the coffee table where Mako Tanida’s head had been, proof that somebody had given a shit about him and his pain, even for a few hours - that Ressler found the phone number.

A little white card, tucked in the interior breast pocket of his suit.

_For a good time, call_

He couldn’t quite throw it away.

Reddington’s laugh echoed in his mind.


End file.
